— No, Joe, if that’s true, then our life has been useless. Yours and mine.—
— You, you, your life. Who gives a fuck for you fishing for a pat on the back. I’m not listening, do you hear, I’m not listening—
Pauline lifted her long, blunt-nailed hand, to raise against her son or to protect herself, silver bangles from which the chasing had long worn off sliding down towards her elbow: the gesture was not concluded. There was an intrusion. The telephone rang. Hillela was speaking from a police station in Durban. She was fine. Mandy von Herz was fine. They had been recognized by the police on the North Beach. The police were being really nice, they allowed her to phone. Joe spoke to the sergeant and arranged for the girls to be put on the train that evening.
— And him? — Hoarse Pauline presented Joe with the presence of Sasha, swollen-lipped, before them. Her voice was slurred as if she were stunned by drink. — Does the school know you’re here?—
He did not answer.
His mother lifted her big head again. — And what are we going to do about that? He could be expelled. — Where do they think you are?—
— Manzini.—
— So. Joe — you decide with him how to get out of this mess. A prefect simply runs away when he’s sent to a soccer match. What school can overlook that? What d’you suggest we do now? Simply walks out and hitches a lift home without a word to anyone, like any dropout, any delinquent—
Joe kept the professional manner he had adopted over the other matter, with the Durban police. — I’ll phone, I’ll explain.—
Pauline’s great head and red-scratched cheeks faced everyone, the inhabited helmet and mask of authority. — What’ll you explain?—
— He was under stress. A family matter.—
Hillela’s nose is peeling and there is a bracelet made of turban shells on her right wrist. When she sees her cousin Sasha, home, reading the Sunday paper, she puts a hand over her opened mouth. — Was it your half-term—
They all hear Sasha. — No. A couple of us seniors got a chance of a lift, so they gave us a weekend.—
The house needs to recuperate from the dread Hillela left behind her, and from the emotions Sasha let loose. Pauline has made a lamb curry with accompanying chapatis, yoghurt-and-cucumber salad, bananas with coconut, and peach chutney — the young people’s favourite lunch. Joe asks what the swimming was like. Oh wonderful, though not as good as Plett. — The water was so warm we all went in on Friday night — about two in the morning!—
— Who’d you meet up with? — Carole slips into innocent schoolgirl gossip.
— No-one in particular. Mandy knows some chaps from Michael-house, it turned out it was their half-term, and they knew someone I met at Plett.—
— Who’s that?—
Sasha swallows a large mouthful and turns on his sister. — Nosey.—
Hillela is smiling at Sasha, but he doesn’t look at her face. She glances down at her arm as if something, a touch of light, has directed attention there. She rolls the shell bracelet off over her fist. — I brought this for you, Carole. Sasha — I would’ve got you something if I’d known you’d be here—
The Shadow of a Palm Tree
There was a time and place for Hillela to give account of herself.
Olga’s Rover kept by Jethro shiny as the taps in her bathroom stood outside the gate. Olga sat in Pauline’s worn livingroom with Pauline, waiting. Olga got up and hugged her; —Hillela, oh Hillela. — She was sweaty from the day at school and did not know when it would be all right to break the sweet-smelling embrace. — You want to tidy up a bit? — Olga lifted the hair at the back of the girl’s head, gauging it needed an expert cut.
— There’s a chicken sandwich in the kitchen, darling. Leftovers from the grand lunch I gave Olga.—
— It was a perfectly good lunch, believe me. I usually have an apple and a bit of cheese.—
— Yes, one can see that by the shape you keep. But I can’t be bothered. There are too many other things to do. I’m hungry; I eat bread and peanut butter to fuel myself; I spread around the arse …—
She came back barefoot, her face washed, hair pushed behind her ears.
— Your sandwich.—
She turned and fetched it from the kitchen.
Olga kept smiling at her, frowning and smiling at once, as people do in order not to make fools of themselves in some way. Olga would leave it to Pauline: Pauline accepted with the gesture of inevitability. — It’s all been passed off just as if you’ve been — I don’t know, spending the weekend with a friend, as if it were any other time you or Carole …? But the fact is, my dear little Hillela, you gave us all a terrible twenty-four hours. Not only us, your immediate family here where you belong, but also Olga … Olga was running around hospitals and police stations, just like us.—
Olga’s smile broke. — We don’t want to reproach you, darling. We only want to know why. Why you could just go off like that.—
— You know how much freedom I give you and Carole and Sasha. If you had an invitation, if you planned to go to Durban, you could so easily have asked me …—
Pauline told Joe, Olga told Arthur: the girl answered unnaturally openly: —On Friday after tennis we were hot, and we began talking about the sea. So we thought, why not go?—
— Without money, without a change of clothes?—
The girl reassured Olga. They had their gym shorts, pullovers and swimming costumes in their attaché cases; Mandy had money. They had no trouble getting lifts. First a man and his wife going to their farm near Harrismith, and then they waited about half-an-hour at the roadside before a van driver stopped, he was on his way back to Cato Manor because his boss let him keep the van over the weekend, but he specially went right into Durban, for them.
— Isn’t Cato Manor a black location?—
Pauline broke in across her sister. — Prejudice is one thing, Hillela, and you know in this house I take full responsibility for bringing you up without any colour-feeling, any colour-consciousness. But you must realize that there are risks one doesn’t take. Just as I often tell you children one shouldn’t leave money lying around where it can be a temptation to poor people … Young girls just do not take lifts from men — men of any colour.—
Olga had her hand at her own throat. — We’re so afraid for you, Hillela.—
Mandy von Herz was removed from the school by her parents, since she refused to remain there under a ban on associating with Hillela Capran. Mr von Herz came to see Joe — he did not think such matters should be discussed with women — because he believed Hillela’s family should know that Mandy had been afraid to take a lift with the black man, and the black man himself had been afraid to pick up two white girls, but it was Hillela who had flagged him down and Hillela who had persuaded him. He was an elderly black man, apparently, and had some respect for his position as well as theirs, thank God.
— Sanctimonious creep! — Pauline was only sorry she hadn’t been allowed to get at von Herz and tell him what she thought of him. Of course, his way of dealing with his daughter was to take the easy way out, and blame someone else’s child.
Pauline herself never explained why she brought in Olga to deal with Hillela that time. Perhaps there had been the suggestion, since Olga was always saying she, too, was responsible for Ruthie’s child, that she might try her hand again. Olga could take her away, to a new environment; Pauline had heard Arthur was thinking of emigrating to Canada.
Maybe the girl would be happier there.
— Why? — Joe disliked unqualified statements. There was nothing to substantiate that the girl was unhappy, anyway.
— Maybe even Olga would be different, there.—